is an historic moment. Thursday, NASA has officially confirmed: Voyager 1 has left the solar system to venture into interstellar space. The fateful moment came there more than a year, on 25 August 2012. But scientists have had to analyze vast amounts of data to validate the event.
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astrophysicists Voyager, which is more than 18 billion kilometers from the Sun, was released from the heliopause, the border zone of the solar system. This course marks the limit of the influence of the solar wind meets the interstellar medium when filled with materials from other stars in our galaxy.
There really is no “Welcome to outer space” panel. But new analyzes of plasma densities around the vessel proved to conform to the densities found in the interstellar region predicted in models of researchers. Citing Star Trek , NASA welcomed “Voyager has gone where no probe was still gone!”
17 hours for the signal to travel to Earthnow? The probe and its twin, Voyager 2, will continue his journey. The size of a small car, it has an antenna diameter of four meters and a radio that allows it to send the results of its measures to Earth. It takes about 17 hours for the signal to reach us, against only 14 minutes from Curiosity Mars. His camera was however off in 1990 to save energy.
its plutonium batteries, the sensor should still be able to power the instruments until 2020-2025 before radio silence. Then it will continue its momentum, wandering alone in our galaxy. His next destination? The vicinity of a star of the Little Dipper, Gliese 445. It will “only” 1.7 years light of the sun. In about 40,000 years.
P.B. with AFP
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